Vladimir Putin, China Economy, Indonesia: Your Tuesday Briefing

Good morning. We’ll begin with a tight focus on the presidential talks in Finland. Here’s what you need to know:

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CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

• The scene in Helsinki.

There were delays (the Russian plane was late), but President Trump and President Vladimir Putin held their one-on-one talks in Helsinki.

We don’t know everything the two men spoke about — only translators were present — but their 45-minute news conference afterward was a remarkable spectacle. They raised the possibility that their intelligence agencies might work together, and both pushed back at the notion that Moscow interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, directly contradicting the conclusion of U.S. investigations.

The government’s announcement that its economy was 6.7 percent bigger last quarter than a year ago dovetailed with its reports for the past two-and-a-half years. But this time, our Shanghai bureau chief sees trouble lurking behind those numbers: weakening investment in infrastructure and less exuberant consumer spending.

Separately, in this dispatch from Zhengzhou, our correspondent tried out one of the more dystopian tools of China’s growing surveillance-industrial complex: facial recognition glasses used by police.

Above, an intersection with cameras linked to facial recognition technology displays photos of jaywalkers alongside their name and I.D. number.

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CreditMossad

• When Israel raided Iran’s nuclear secrets.

In a daring, clandestine operation in January, spies for Israel infiltrated a warehouse in Tehran and seized roughly 50,000 pages of documents and records related to Iran’s nuclear program.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the information to help persuade President Trump to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal.

Last week, a reporter from The Times was one of three who were shown some of the key documents taken during the raid, including the photos above, which appear to show a chamber built for high-explosive experiments.

The documents confirm what inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency long suspected: that the program Iran claimed was for peaceful purposes had also systematically assembled the requirements for atomic weapons. Read our report here.

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CreditBrendan Esposito/European Pressphoto Agency

• “If you’re talking, you can breathe.”

In Australia, a disturbing video shown at the inquest into the case of a 26-year-old Indigenous Australian who died in a Sydney jail in 2015 has reignited long-simmering anger about the deaths of Indigenous people in custody.

Above, protesters outside the jail last year.

In the video, the prisoner, who suffered from mental health problems, can be heard telling the guards pinning him to his bed that he couldn’t breathe. He said it at least 12 times, in a high, panicky scream, before becoming inert.

“No one should have to go through that,” said a state lawmaker working with the dead man’s family.

Business

• Deals between big brands and viral online video performers are quickly becoming a business estimated to reach $10 billion in 2020. A Times reporter examined the complex rituals, including speed dating events, that advertisers and viral performers use to find the right match.

In the News

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CreditAnn Wang/Reuters

• A Reuters reporter accused of obtaining secret state documents in Myanmar challenged the prosecution’s account of how he and a colleague were arrested. He said that a policeman insisted on a meeting, at which the officer abruptly handed some papers to them. [The New York Times]

• In Pakistan, the death toll from last week’s suicide attack in Balochistan Province rose to at least 149, including nine children. It’s the second deadliest attack since the country’s independence in 1947. [BBC]

• A U.S. policy shift in Afghanistan: The Trump administration has told its top diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban, in the hopes of ending the 17-year war. [The New York Times]

• In Indonesia, villagers armed with knives, shovels, hammers and clubs slaughtered 292 protected crocodiles in retaliation for a local man’s death in a crocodile attack at a breeding farm. [Time]

• “It’s not finished.” A British diver who helped rescue of 12 boys trapped in a cave in northern Thailand is considering legal action after Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, called him a “pedo” on Twitter. [The Guardian]

• Former President Barack Obama arrived in Kenya, his father’s home country, to promote the opening of a sports center that his half sister, Auma Obama, founded through her charity. [The New York Times]

Noteworthy

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CreditNetflix

• Hannah Gadsby, an Australian comedian, was virtually unknown in the U.S. just a few weeks ago. Now, her stand-up special “Nanette” has become one of the most discussed comedy performances in ages. Here’s a collection of essays and conversations about Ms. Gadsby and “Nanette.”

Back Story

George H.W. Bush pronounced it “marvelous.” Bill Gates called it his favorite book. Green Day sings about it. More sinisterly, Mark David Chapman carried it when he shot John Lennon.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” by Jerome David Salinger, was published 67 years ago this week. (Read The Times’s 1951 review.) The tale of Holden Caulfield, a sensitive, failed prep-school student on the verge of a breakdown, ignited all of the passions of a cult classic, yet it has sold 65 million copies and been translated into some 30 languages.

J.D. Salinger — to whose name “reclusive” is invariably appended — gave few interviews before his death in 2010, but he once revealed, “My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book, and it was a great relief telling people about it.” Above, Salinger working on “Catcher in the Rye” during World War II.

The novel’s distinctive expression of teen agita rang true to countless readers: “Grand. There’s a word I really hate,” Holden thinks as someone talks. “It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”

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